Vulnerability in SiteScape Poses High Risk to Internal Networks

Bob Styran, IT audit expert

January 14, 2011 /

Information security assessment and protection services provider SecureState has come up with new details on the vulnerability in Novell’s SiteScape Enterprise Forum web originally released in 2007 as CVE 2007-6515.

SiteScape Enterprise Forum web is an application used by organizations to enable exchanges of communications and documents online. SecureState said the newly discovered vulnerability in SiteScape, which was initially unvalidated, could give hackers an avenue to stage an attack to the internal networks of an organization. Case at point is the ease with which the tool command language (TCL) of the web application could be executed by hackers to gain access to an organization’s internal networks, SecureState said in its website.

“The vulnerability itself remains…in candidate status, and no exploit code has been released,” the company added.

SecureState Profiling Consultant Spencer McIntyre said a study showed that the “bug” could be used to manipulate the server to run commands upon one’s discretion “which, needless to say, is a large issue.”

The company found that the vulnerability emerged to be remotely exploitable, unauthenticated, and easily executable through a command, enough for it to fall under high-risk category.

“Using this vulnerability and the code that we released, organizations that run SiteScape Forum can determine if they are vulnerable, as well as see what an attacker could do with the vulnerability. This is important because the vulnerability is not well known, and no code proving it is exploitable had been released until now,” SecureState said.

McIntyre advised the organizations that use SiteScape Enterprise Forum to use the newer version of the application capable of plugging the vulnerability to ward off the risk from hackers.